Connectivism

I have enjoyed participating in the Online Connectivism Conference over the past few days. Today’s critique of connectivism as a learning theory was really quite engaging… despite the occasional outages on the Australia end. George Siemens is to be commended not only for orchestrating this conference so hundreds could participate from around the world (and participate they have… along with providing technical support and resources). And, he’s to be commended for continuing to engage in the dialog to help refine the theory and approach.

Earlier in this blog I criticized — or at least questioned — the over use of words that didn’t really convey meaning outside of a “small circle” or community of practice. Connectivism was one of the words I challenged. I’m glad to have had the opportunity to engage in these conversations and become more informed.

I have been thinking about the evolution of the educational experience… those of us involved in “online” learning quickly understood that the role of teacher changed from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side”… that is, if we thought about the changing dynamic of hte learning environment.

Now, as someone who has left teaching to become a student, I think alot about the barriers (a convoluted IRB process being my current pet peeve) as well as the boundaries (do I really just think about systems theory from 7:30-9:30 every other Thursday?) that have been part of the education system.

Might we start thinking about distributed, networked LEARNING as boundary-less and barrier-less. My current wonder is how Bloom and Gardiner might adjust their models in this new environment and how that might help change the power structure of the classroom.

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

This entry was posted on February 8, 2007 at 4:12 am and is filed under TLT KA.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.